[HN Gopher] Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha S...
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       Class Dismissed: Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School
        
       Author : surprisetalk
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2025-09-29 15:41 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (joincolossus.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (joincolossus.com)
        
       | skybrian wrote:
       | Also see this anonymous entry into an essay-writing contest by
       | one of the parents:
       | 
       | https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Read both. This is fascinating. Notes:
         | 
         | - 1 on 1 tutoring yields about 2 standard deviations of
         | improvement, but costs too much.
         | 
         | - The Alpha system is very effective but costs about
         | $40,000/student.
         | 
         | - It's not that complicated. 2-3 hours a day of intense
         | computer-monitored study, about half using off the shelf tools,
         | and the rest of the day is developed to less structured
         | projects. This is a useful insight. Push kids hard for about
         | 2-3 hours a day and then get to the fun stuff.
         | 
         | - Works on ordinary kids. Strong claims in this area. Needs
         | outside validation.
         | 
         | - Lots of carrot, including cash payments for achievement. Not
         | much stick.
         | 
         | - Staff/student ratio about 1:5. No teachers from bottom
         | quartile of teacher population.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | That article mentions family income as possible confounder only
         | once, while in an article of this extent I would expect it to
         | appear dozens of times and be the central point. You simply
         | cannot draw conclusions from comparing general populations and
         | kids in schools that cost $500k for a 13-grade education, or
         | that cost any amount. Students from low income households have
         | so many headwinds. They don't come to school because their
         | transportation is unreliable, because their teeth hurt, because
         | they can't afford sanitary pads, they can't sleep because their
         | neighborhoods are too loud, and so on. When this school opened
         | in Brownsville and preferentially enrolled only the children of
         | employed aeronautical engineers, that precluded any possible
         | comparison of outcomes.
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-02 23:00 UTC)